Taking care of you
by Malh Articy
Summary: Percy has always felt like he was the only failure of his family and therefore he's been pushing himself very hard to be the very best at everything until it started having an impact on his health. Fortunately, Oliver is here to take care of him.


**TAKING CARE OF YOU**

Percy had always been the ugly duckling of his family. There were Bill and Charlie the two older brothers who had made their parents proud, the twins who were so funny and mischievous that it was impossible not to love them, Ron who was the great Harry Potter's best friend and of course Ginny, the younger sister that everyone cherished. And then there was Percy, the one who was always put aside, forgotten. He was his grandparents' least favourite grandchild; family friends would always forget to send him an invitation to their party, pretending that it was a mistake. But deep down everyone knew that it was an excuse not to let him in because he was the killjoy, the boring law-abiding one.

So the least Percy could do was to do his best in every possible field. He didn't have the spark of creativity which made the Weasley family so unique, so to compensate, he had to be perfect in every way possible. This involved spending his entire holidays working alone in his room, whole nights awake bent on a book, long weekends spent looking after the griffondor kids. But no one ever seemed to notice him, to get how hard it was for him to keep up with everyone's expectations, after all, who was he compared to his awesome siblings?

Percy had decided that to be at his best, he had to completely forget himself, to dedicate himself to work, neglecting his personal life. At some point, everyone at Hogwarts thought that he slept in the library, but it would have implied that he slept; which was highly unlikely.

It was how things worked until something very odd happened: someone noticed him. And this someone wasn't anyone, it was Oliver Wood, the captain of the Quidditch team, the handsome Keeper that everyone liked, pretty much the opposite of the Prefect. One day Percy was skipping lunch, working in the library when Oliver came to sit right next to him and started staring at him. Percy stiffened but didn't look back, with all these years spent alone he had learned how mean people can be when they decided to make fun of you, and the quidditch player coming near him was obviously part of a joke. But when he spoke, it was with a very soft tone:

"Hey, Percy isn't it?"

Of course it was his name. Oliver had known it for years but had never dared to come to talk to him, his friends would always make fun of him when he looked at the redhead for too long, until this day. It was a few days ago. The Prefect had punished one of his friends who had pushed around a first year for having "looked at him in a wrong way" by giving him a detention. His friend didn't appreciate it and decided to retaliate; he locked himself with Percy in an empty room and beat the shit out of him, he knew all the right places to hit without leaving too many marks. Of course, the Head Boy never reported this; it would have been proof that he was weak. This day Oliver decided that these guys were no longer his friends. In addition to this, with the exams coming Percy had spent even more time working and seemed paler every day, coughing and sneezing all day long. So he finally made the decision to man up and go talk to him.

The younger boy finally looked back at him but didn't answer.

"I saw you were alone, so I took the chance to come to talk to you,"

Of course he was alone, Percy was always alone.

"I wanted to apologize for my ex-friends behaviour, they are complete morons."

"Ex-friends?"

"Yep, I decided that I didn't belong with people who use violence to solve all their problems."

Percy didn't want to keep up with this conversation but despite his best intentions to hide it, he was and would always be compassionate.

"You shouldn't let your friends go because of me; I'm not worth it, I don't want you to be alone because of me..."

Oliver couldn't help but smile, the ginger boy was so sweet, it was a shame he was always hiding it behind an armour of uprightness. Oliver felt true empathy towards him.

"I'm not alone", but he didn't let time to the other boy to answer it and kept talking, "besides, I also wanted to make sure that you were OK. You look pale, you cough and you seem weak, look you're shaking!"

Indeed, Percy was shaking, and even if Oliver was right about his symptoms, it wasn't because of it. Percy hadn't even noticed his condition; he was too absorbed in his work; this might have been going on for days without him knowing. But it didn't matter, because Oliver had somehow implied that he was weak, that he couldn't care for himself and that he NEEDED someone to tell him what to do and how to look after himself. He wasn't a child. He wasn't a baby and he wasn't going to let some stupid quidditch star take him down. He knew his anger wasn't justified; he knew Oliver was only trying to be nice, but he didn't need his pity. He gathered his books quickly and left without a word, letting Oliver puzzled. He had obviously underestimated Percy's pride.

Several days passed without any other incident of this kind. Oliver's friend had let Percy alone and so did he, he didn't want to upset the Prefect more than he already had. He understood that it must be hard for him to realise he had flaws like everyone else and that it was just what life was about.

But after a week, Oliver had to do something about Percy's health. Despite the fact that he was definitely sick, he had kept on working just as much as before which had obviously worsen whatever he was coming down with. The Quidditch team member had a lot of classes in common with the Head boy and even if the boy in question was doing his best to avoid him, I noticed that the coughing fits grew longer and apparently way more painful. Even if of course he pitied him, he also resented him for not getting the help he needed.

Percy wasn't feeling well and had to admit that Oliver was right, he had caught some sort of flu. But this wouldn't stop him from fulfilling his duty. It happened that he had to go to the Quidditch field to check for some sort of compulsory lines on the ground which had been erased by the heavy rains of the winter. The rain hadn't stopped yet and when Percy came out of the protection of the castle he regretted not having taken an umbrella with him. He headed half running to the field and checked on the god damn lines which obviously underwent the rain better than he did given how harsh his cough sounded. It is at the moment he was about to leave that he started feeling very dizzy. The field started spinning uncontrollably around him, he couldn't keep is balance anymore, he felt he was falling.

Instead of the wet and muddy ground he expected, he met an admittedly wet but soft piece of fabric. It took him several minutes to gather him thoughts and finally notice that the fabric was part of the Griffondor Quidditch team outfit. He looked up to meet Oliver's concerned eyes, checking him for any injury. The Keeper had seen him on the field and had rush to the ground when he saw him collapse. When he finally realised in what position he was, Oliver's arms firmly wrapped around him, Percy blushed so hard Oliver couldn't help but let a soft laughter out. But he wasn't laughing at all a second later when Percy's body, exhausted, became limp in his arms.

Oliver felt guilty. After having carried Percy's unconscious body back to the castle, he had decided to get him back to the room that they shared instead of getting him to the infirmary right where he needed to be. Even if he didn't like to admit it, Oliver understood how Percy was feeling. Before discovering his talent for Quidditch, Oliver had been a bit like Percy, the one who's nothing. He knew how much Percy was trying to be good, all he wanted was to be acknowledged, and he would certainly be very upset to wake up in the infirmary, being reprimanded, as always, for having neglected himself like that. So he brought him to their room, not even knowing how to take care of him.

He brought a bowl in which he poured some cold water and soaked a piece of fabric, hoping that putting it on Percy's forehead would bring his temperature back to normal given the fact that students didn't have the right to bring medicine to the dormitory. The redhead jolted awake as soon as the fabric touched his forehead, he frantically grabbed the sheets of his bed and started looking around him, trying to understand where he was. Oliver put his hand on his chest to help him calm down and when Percy finally noticed his room-mate he relaxed a little bit, still sitting very upright on the bed despite his sickness, which impressed Oliver. He pushed him gently back into a lying position and put back the fabric which had slipped from his head. The Prefect complied, to tired to protest.

"Hi sleeping beauty, how're you feeling?"

Percy looked at the clock and opened his eyes round.

"I'm feeling like I just missed to hours of potion class and I'd better get ready to present my deepest apologises to Snape if I don't want my head to end up on a stick!"

He tried to get out of the bed but Oliver didn't let him.

"Don't you dare trying getting out of this bed, you wouldn't make it to the door anyway!"

"That's what we'll see!"

Percy tried again, this time more fiercely, but we wasn't in the shape to compete with the captain of the Quidditch team who pushed him authoritatively back in bed. Oliver knew that his room-mate would try to sneak out of the room as soon as he would see an opportunity to do so, therefore he went to the small kitchen and quickly prepared some soup. When he came back he was both relieved and annoyed. Thankfully the other boy was still in the room but he had managed to make it to the cupboard and had started cleaning the room, Percy's constant need to be active and useful was starting to get on Oliver's nerves!

"Unbelievable! You're sick, you need to rest!", shouted Oliver.

"Come on I'm not that sick, I can do a bit of cleansing!", complained Percy.

"I don't care, you're not going to clean anything if you die from exhaustion! Now eat this soup or I'll make you, and I'm not bluffing!" Oliver said, forcing Percy back into his bed.

Seeing how mad at him Oliver was, the head boy decided not to challenge his patience and ate what we could given his very little appetite, still upset that Oliver treated him like child.

"Look, for once you have to let someone help you, let me love you!"

Percy didn't answer but judging by the look on his face, Oliver guest that it must had been a long time since Percy had been said he was loved. The Quidditch team leader, despite the fact that he was convinced Percy needed to eat more than that to recover, knew that he had still eaten enough of the soup so that the sleeping pills he had put in it would knock him out for at least a couple of hours. He hated having to do this but he knew the stubborn prefect would not stop trying to get back to work without taking his very concerning high temperature account. After a few minutes, Percy's head started to nod and his eyes eventually rolled in his head. Oliver laid him on he bed, worried that the medicine had had such a strong effect on the boy who was very sensitive to any kind of treatment (he remembered one day Ms Pumfrey had forced him to drink some Skele-Grow, he had spent the entire night screaming in agony). Once he was sure Percy was fast asleep, the quidditch player decided to lay on his bed as well so that he could watch over Percy while resting a little bit. He felt like as soon as his head hit the pillow he fell asleep.

Oliver woke up to the sound of someone screaming. He jumped on his feet and hurried at Percy's side who was contorting himself in the bed, his hands clenching the sheets, his forehead covered with a thin layer of sweat. His eyes where squeezed shut but Oliver could still see his eyes moving crazily under the eyelids.

"Nightmare", he thought

He had had a few very bad dreams himself in his childhood but thought that growing up, you stopped believing in horror stories and didn't have anything scary enough to wake you up at night. Apparently he was wrong. He strongly grabbed the boy's shoulders and started gently shaking them, telling his room-mate to wake up but as he saw that it wasn't working, he started shaking him more roughly. Percy let out a final scream when he finally woke up and started sobbing into Oliver's arms. What he had seen in this dream had surely traumatized him.

After a good ten minutes, Percy stopped crying to start apologising for being such a dead weight, for being the biggest moron on earth who couldn't do anything but be a pain for the others. Oliver kept hugging him, telling him that he was wrong that it was a fever delirium but it was useless.

But things really got scary when Percy started digging his nails really deep into his palms, mumbling some incoherent thoughts about the fact that he was a mistake and that he needed to be purged so that the world would be purified from his presence. While trying to keep his room-mate's hands pressed against the bed, Oliver could remember one of his fever dream which had to do with something like lack of air in his room. Yes, that was it. He wanted to build a 30-meter-long straw to let it come out by his door so that he would be able to breath the air from outside. Percy's dreams seemed way more serious and dangerous than his owns.

Fortunately, the fragile head boy ended up, after a long struggle with his inner demons, falling back asleep in his room-mate's arms who noticed how light he was. After having bandaged the hands of the Weasley boy which where covered in blood, Oliver pulled the blanket up on him so that he wouldn't be too cold but it didn't stop him from shivering. His fever was dangerously high and Oliver contemplated bringing the redhead to the infirmary but he knew that Percy would consider it a betrayal so he made a deal with the unconscious boy. If his fever hadn't broke by 6 am, he would bring him to the infirmary or even to the hospital if it was necessary. He couldn't afford loosing the only person who was worth caring for.

Oliver could say without an hesitation that he had surely spent the worse night of his life. Percy's fever didn't break at all but even continued rising during the night, making him hallucinate horror scenarios. Oliver couldn't completely understand what the head boy was dreaming about given the fact that he was mainly mumbling incoherent pieces of thoughts but his screams and whines were enough to get that whatever imaginary world he was in, it wasn't a pleasing one. The Quidditch captain felt horrible about how useless he was. He first tried to wake up Percy when he was having a nightmare but when he would come back to sleep the nightmares would resume. In addition to this, Oliver noticed that every time he woke Percy up he was weaker, it appeared that doing so, he deprived him from the sleep he needed to recover. So he decided to only wake the redhead up when he would start harming himself in his sleep, which actually happened a lot.

The deadline Oliver had set was almost there when the fever broke, Oliver suspected that Percy was unconsciously so anxious about having to be taken care of by some nurses in an hospital that his bloody body had decided to stop heating up like an oven. Oliver sighed, relieved that even though he was extremely weak, Percy would survive.

At about 7am the prefect finally opened his eyes, looking at Oliver with his barely focused eyes. The other boy refused to give him his glasses, saying that he couldn't afford to waste any energy even to focus his vision. Percy laughed slightly, it was surprising for him to see someone caring so much about him.

"Hi Oliver, How are you doing?"

Oliver gently pushed his shoulder in a falsely annoyed way.

"I just spent the worse night of my life for your beautiful eyes but except this I'm on fire!"

Percy's smile faded and Oliver internally face-palmed for having said that, knowing that Percy always felt he was a burden for the others.

"I'm kidding! I will always be happy to take care of such a handsome guy!"

Percy blushed strongly.

"I'm really sorry, you probably missed a lot of classes and Quidditch training because of me, you should have let me deal with it, I'm not worth your tim..."

Percy didn't have the opportunity to finish his sentence because of Oliver's lips pressed against his. It was a very gentle kiss, they both wanted to take it further but given Percy's state, the Quidditch player decided to break the kiss.

"You should get back to sleep, you're still very weak"

"Fine, thanks for everything. I've never met someone like you before. I think..."

"You think what?"

"I... I feel like I love you..."

He was now blushing so hard that he could have been mistaken for a tomato.

"I love you too, and I don't feel like it, I know it. I'll always be there for you"

Oliver didn't know how right he was. Indeed, it turned out that Percy had a very fragile health but contrary to all the other persons the redhead had met, his lover never let him down.

END


End file.
